Every Valentine's Day this happens. There are 119 restaurants in the vicinity. Julios, where I work as a chef, is not an ordinary restaurant. Never has been.
What makes you think you can call a day before Valentine's and make a reservation? Are you stupid? The smart ones made reservations a month or two ago, when you could choose your table and sit by the fire. Yet, for the week before Valentine's there are 30 messages on the machine every day from people wanting to make reservations.
You wouldn't believe the name-dropping and attempts at arm twisting and influencing that people do on the phone.
Right, so we're going to call some guy who made his reservation a month ago and tell him he can't have his table because somebody more "important" than he wants the table? Is that what you think?
I don't get it. You remember you need to take your wife out for Valentine's one or two days before? You expect the premier restaurant in the county to have a table for your sorry ass? No. Just no. And it doesn't matter how important you think you are. Joe Blow reserved that table two weeks ago. Period. There's nothing to discuss. It doesn't matter who you are or how important you think you are. Your "political pull" doesn't work here. No, we don't keep a couple tables in reserve in case some forgetful VIP calls. We book the restaurant full. This is a business. How is this not obvious to you???
Who are these people, anyway? Who do they think they are?
@shuttersparks https://youtu.be/A-brgkkjnHc?si=hhujQ8-WF2vF19l- Reminds me of this Seinfeld bit 😆 ...but in reverse.
@jellycrystals Bahahaha. Yeah.
We can seat 54 in the dining room and 20 in the cafe but on Valentine's it's mostly couples. Two's. So by timing the reservations and flipping tables, we can accommodate about 100, max. between 5 and 9 PM.
So it continued, Thursday and Friday, Valentine's Day. The phone was ringing non-stop. Take a call, 60 seconds later, it rang again. At 7 PM on Valentine's Day, the phone was still ringing. Are these people crazy? Stupid? Wtf?
It was interfering with our work. We had 100 people to feed. So we took the phone off the hook for the rest of the night.
Ridiculous.